We Don't Expect Perfect

This is one of the things we have told our children since they were old enough to hear it.  Somehow, I don’t think it has sunk in.  And so, again, tonight, I repeated it to our perfectionist daughter.  I won’t deny, she has learned it from both of us.  I want to get things right the first time, and I hate making mistakes.  I guilt myself over the smallest thing, and worry about things most people wouldn’t give a second thought to.  Beef likes things to be done right every time, and when they do not appear correct or “perfect”, he will fight until it is the way he wants it.  Which is odd, because aesthetics do not bother him, so if it works, he really does not care what it looks like.  So what I consider perfect, and what he considers perfect are two very different things.  But we still expect it.

Tonight, the kids were jumping from something in A1’s room.  We knew this because the light fixtures were shaking, and the lights flickered.  We hollered up for them to stop jumping, and yet, more jumps came.  Beef headed upstairs, and there were voices, and the next thing I know, A1 is crying, and Cheese and Beef come downstairs.  I ask what happened, and Beef tells me that he asked them if they were jumping, and A1 said, “No.”  Which was a lie.  He told her that the next time she lied, she would be spanked, and for now, she would be staying in her room to think, and when she was ready, she could come down and talk to us.

When she came down, she was contrite, and kept her head down.  She mumbled when we asked her to talk.  I finally looked at her and said, “What’s up with you girl?  Why did you lie about jumping?”  She didn’t really have an answer, but just kept apologizing for jumping.  I told her that I was more concerned with the reason she lied.  I told her that we (mommy and daddy) do not like liars.  We do not associate with people who lie.  We don’t lie, and we don’t expect our kids to lie.  Lying is bad.  It makes us not be able to trust you, and so when you want to do things, we can’t believe that you are going to do what you say you are going to do.  If we can’t believe you, we won’t be able to let you do anything fun.  For a long time.  She put on her sad face, and she started to cry a little.

We don’t expect you to be perfect.  We know you are going to make mistakes.  We all make mistakes.  Mommy and Daddy make mistakes every day, but we don’t deny them.  We say the truth.  If we make a bad choice, we have to live with the consequences and so do you.  We don’t expect you to be perfect, but we expect you to be responsible, respectful, and caring, just like at school.  Lying is not responsible, it’s not respectful, and it’s not caring.  It’s the opposite of all those things.  We do not want you to be a liar.  If you don’t get control of your lying now, you will grow up to be an even bigger liar, and when you lie so much, eventually, it will get you into big trouble.  Like police trouble.  So stop it today!

Now, I know that she lied to protect herself.  I know she wan’t aware that telling a lie about jumping would cause such a ruffle in her mother’s feathers.  But it did.  The reason for the lie doesn’t matter.  The motive behind it is what I’m trying to get to, so I can figure out how to help end it.  This has happened before, again, to protect herself.  We’ve been down this road before, and I think it’s become her natural reaction to any question being asked of her in a threatening manner.

It led to a good conversation between Beef and I tonight.  We won’t be asking her yes/no questions anymore.  And if we catch her doing something she shouldn’t be, we won’t be asking her if she did it.  We will just have the consequence, and then if she denies doing it, she will have a consequence for lying.  We have the consequence already determined, and she knows what it is.  It will be the same thing every time, for every lie.  We hope this consistency will help her learn quickly.  Because we want her to be trustworthy.  It was nice when we knew without a doubt that she would never lie about anything, but now, we just don’t have that same assurance.  Someday, I’m sure we will again.